n good
order; and, if possible, inclose it so that it can be kept under
lock. Place a steady, careful old man there as hostler, making him
responsible for every thing, and that directly to yourself. The
foreman of the plow-gang, and the hands under his care, should be made
answerable to the hostler--whose business it is to have the feed cut
up, ground, and ready; the stalls well littered and cleaned out at
proper intervals; to attend to sick or maimed animals; to see that the
gears are always hung in their proper place, kept in good order, and
so on.

It is an easy matter to keep horses or mules fat, with a full and open
corn-crib and abundance of fodder. But that overseer shows his good
management who can keep his teams fat at the least expense of corn
and fodder. The waste of those articles in the South, through shameful
carelessness and neglect, is immense; as food for stock, they are most
expensive articles. Oats, millet, peas (vine and all), broadcast corn,
Bermuda and crab-grass hay, are all much cheaper and equally good.
Any one of these crops, fed whilst green--the oats and millet as they
begin to shoot, the peas to blossom, and the corn when tasseling--with
a feed of dry oats, corn, or corn-chop at noon, will keep a plow-team
in fine order all the season. In England, where they have the finest
teams in the world, this course _is invariably pursued_, for its
economy. From eight to nine hours per day is as long as the team
should be at actual work. They will perform more upon less feed, and
keep in better order for a _push_ when needful, worked briskly in that
way, than when kept dragging a plow all day long at a slow pace.
And the hands have leisure to rest, to cut up feed, clean and repair
gears, and so on.

Oxen. No more work oxen should be retained than can be kept at all
times in good order. An abundant supply of green feed during
spring and summer, cut and fed as recommended above, and in winter
well-boiled cotton-seed, with a couple of quarts of meal in it per
head; turnips, raw or cooked; corn-cobs soaked twenty-four hours
in salt and water; shucks, pea-vines, etc., passed through a
cutting-box--any thing of the kind, in short, is cheaper food for them
in winter, and will keep them in better order than dry corn and shucks
or fodder.

Indeed, the fewer cattle are kept on any place the better, unless the
range is remarkably good. When young stock of any kind are stinted of
their proper food, and their